


It's Just Their Luck

by spacejunk (Dreamy_Ideal)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamy_Ideal/pseuds/spacejunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most beautiful man in the world lives in their building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I used this post as a prompt. I posted a little of it on tumblr but I wanted to keep the train rolling.

Bucky warned him before he left that his truck had been acting up lately. “It’s just to the store and back,” Steve assured him. It was barely 10 minutes up the street. Surely she could make it there and back and help him make a successful grocery run. Steve had faith in her.

That faith was not rewarded, not completely. They made it to the store, but once Steve loaded the trunk with the shopping and tried to take off she refused. She refused loudly and with a dramatic puff of smoke. He called a tow that promised to be there before his ice cream had the chance to melt before he got out to poke his head under the hood.

It didn’t take anything more than a glance for him to conclude there wasn’t a damn thing he could do on his own. He resigned himself to leaning against the car and baking in the summer sun while the tow made its way to him. The owner of the car parked in front of him asked if he needed help. Steve sent them on their way with a polite decline; there was no point in the both of them melting in the summer heat when the tow was coming. A few minutes later another car took its place.

He locked eyes with the owner as he closed his door and Steve smiled, smiled like he would have if it had been Nat or Sharon or Clint emerging from the car. He didn’t recognize the man at all but he couldn’t help it. Looking at him just gave him the urge to smile. The stranger smiled in turn, enough for Steve to note the gap in his teeth that added to the light of his face.

Ask me if I need help, Steve thought, focusing on maintaining his relaxed lean. He would still decline it, but maybe with a joke. Are you a pastor, because I think the only thing that will fix this truck is prayer. Something that might make him laugh and hang back for a moment to ask if Steve was sure that he was okay. Steve scrambled to think of something that he could possibly need some help with as the man took a step towards him—

“Steve right?”

Steve turned to the side. The tow truck was easing up to him, as quick as promised. Steve did his best to seem happy about that. He looked back to the stranger. He was gone, already carrying on towards the store. Steve tried not to sigh. That was the most beautiful man he’d ever laid eyes on. And it was just his luck that he wasn’t able to say a word to him.  
\--

“Hello Mr. Rogers. Forgive me for saying, but you look like you’ve been rooting around in a dumpster.”

“Actually Jarvis, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

Steve didn’t feel like explaining the story at all. All he felt like doing was getting up to his apartment and into the shower so he could wash away the dumpster juice from his skin and the stench in his nose. He simply held up the wallet he successfully managed to retrieve. Thankfully Jarvis wasn’t one to pry. He nodded at pressed the elevator call button.

“Ah, Mr. Wilson, good morning. Quiet night at work?”

“Wouldn’t call it quiet, but it wasn’t busy.”

Steve glanced at the man beside him. He then did a double take.

It was the most beautiful man that he had ever seen in the grocery store parking lot. Only now he was the most beautiful man that he had ever seen standing in his lobby. Their lobby. 

The man with a smile like sunshine lived in his building.

And he just got back from a dumpster dive.

It was just his luck.  
\--

“Ah, dammit. And we were almost there.”

Bucky wasn’t even angry about the cold coffee dripping down the front of his shirt and pants, nor about the pastry container that fell out of his hand a second later, though that inspired a hair of annoyance. “You too? Anyone else want to give up on me?” He glanced in Jarvis’ direction to apologize but the man was already on the other side of the lobby, likely getting something to clean up with.

“You’ve got a coffee rebellion going on?”

“Yea and a pastry uprising,” Bucky said. He looked over his shoulder at the man coming towards the elevator. He wore a pleasant smile but Bucky could recognize the look of long night after long night strung together. The man was stifling a yawn when he got close enough to see the extent of the mess made.

“Shit man,” he said. “And that’s a nice shirt.”

“It’s not the shirt I’m worried about, it’s the gal upstairs that’s gonna be looking for her coffee in 10 minutes.” Bucky reached down for the pastry container. When he straightened back up the man was holding out a small towel and shifting the duffle bag on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, it’s clean.” Bucky thought to turn it down. He met the man’s eyes and took it with a smile instead. In front of them the elevator chimed. “You good?”

“Yea, I can handle rebellion cleanup.” He eased over a bit so the man could get on the elevator without stepping in the spill. “Thanks for the towel…”

“Sam. You’re welcome…”

“Bucky.”

“See you around Bucky.”

Bucky returned to their apartment 30 minutes later with fresh coffee. “What happened?” Steve asked as he took the cups from Bucky, passing Natasha hers.

“That guy you were talking about, the one you saw in the parking lot when the truck broke down? Goatee, gap in his teeth?”

“Yea?”

“You weren’t exaggerating.” That was a beautiful man. Beautiful in italics beautiful.

“You saw him?”

“Name’s Sam.”

“You talked to him?”

“Yea, he gave me a towel when I spilled the first order of coffee.” Bucky tossed said towel on the couch. The grin on Steve’s face matched the excitement in his voice.

“Great, so when you take him back his towel--”

“Didn’t get his apartment number.” Bucky said it as though he meant to do it and not as though he was kicking himself all the way to the coffee shop and back. Steve’s grin fell at once.

“You boys trying to get a date?” Natasha only turned away from her phone for a second to glance at them. “With Sam Wilson?”

Bucky looked to Steve, who looked at Natasha in surprise. “Jarvis called him Mr. Wilson.”

“Lucky for you two I can help with this.”


	2. Chapter 2

He was the most beautiful man in their building. No, she had it wrong. He was The Most Beautiful Man in the World—proper title, italics in there somewhere for emphasis—and he just so happened to live in their building.

It was right on the edge of her tongue. Stretched out on the couch while she watched Sam and David play pool she wanted to tell him. Watch him with a smirk as he responded in his way that wasn’t cocky but still far from the neighborhood of humble. Roll her eyes a bit as she told him that after 3 meetings between the two of them, if you could call them meetings, that the two of them were already smitten, but she didn’t possibly know why.

Natasha knew that it was going to get worse with them, because she knew Sam. Knew how his smile radiated the same type of warmth whether he knew you for 5 years or 5 seconds, how his laugh sounded when he was near to tears, how excited he got when someone got him talking about music or old movies or planes or birds. How excited and cute and damn near breathless he got when someone got him talking about birds and allowed him to keep talking. The way he could make a room full of people feel welcomed and included and in that same crowded make one person feel like they were the only person that mattered. How, when he took an interest in something, he threw his whole self into it, refusing to half ass. Knew just how passionate he was helping people, helping them help themselves.

She knew her two losers were going to fall head over heels when they met Sam. It was hard not to fall even a little bit.

“How are you settling into your new place Wilson?”

Her words fell in time with a triumphant whistle from Sam. “Hey, don’t get that look, I’m not whopping your ass too bad yet,” he said to David just before focusing on Natasha. “Nicely. Once I hide a few more boxes in the backs of all my closets I’ll be good.”

“So you’re having your welcome to the neighborhood party soon?”

“As soon as I set up the stereo.”

“You set that as soon as you got the keys.” Sam laughed.

“Yea. But it was for me, not for hosting. I think I can get it together by this weekend.” Natasha nodded, sitting up.

“So, as the girl who helped you sag your apartment, I think I’m owed a few plus ones to the party.”

“I’m cool with that. Bring ten if you want to.” She didn’t expect Sam to say no, he loved parties with new people. Besides that he knew Natasha, and that meant knowing that she wasn’t going to bring just anybody around. Only her two best losers. “You know, it’s funny, I th--”

Sam’s thought was drowned out by a sudden ringing, followed by a calm voice announcing ‘engine’. Natasha rose to her feet and quickly rounded the couch, David and Sam following close behind her. Their paths diverged as the alert heightened, calling for ‘ems’ as well. “See you on the other side,” Sam said as he took off towards medic one with David at his side.

\--

“Long night Mr. Wilson?”

“Long is one of the words you can use for it.” Long considering the fact that he didn’t get home until well into the afternoon. Tiring was another word, but he wasn’t going to complain because tragic wasn’t a word he could use to describe his night. A lot of property damage, some injuries, but no fatalities. He trade a few weeks of a good night’s sleep for that.

Jarvis pressed the call button for him. Sam yawned, looking around the lobby. On his way back from the station he was thinking that since it was a little later in the day that maybe he would see some life on the ground floor, but again there was no one but Jarvis. He was beginning to wonder if anyone really lived there with him or if he just happened to rent out an elaborate storage space that could double as a place to crash.

Of course Natasha helped him get into a place like this. She would love a place like this. Privacy and seclusion. That was not the type of guy Sam was though. He was the introduce yourself to the neighbors, have casual chats by the mailboxes, call a few people up for a building party on the holidays type of guy. He didn’t know if he would be able to make it for very long in the towers.

“See you in a few hours Jarvis,” Sam said when the elevator bell rang.

“Sleep well Mr. Wilson.” The doors slid open. Jarvis turned to the man jogging out of the elevator. “Did you find it sir?”

“Yea, Buck had them shoved in the pocket of some pants he hasn’t wore since the 40s.”

Sam recognized the guy from the day before, and from the parking lot of the nearby grocery store. At least he was sure one other person lived in the building with him. And he never seemed to be clean when Sam saw him. Today he was covered in streaks of paint from top to bottom. It was all up in his hair and there was a small orange handprint on one of his cheeks along with a good stripe of purple down his nose.

He looked over at Sam for a second, then turned back for a second more. He smiled when he caught the man’s eye. “Your truck working?”

“Yes. I, uh, locked myself out of it though.” He held up a key that Sam assumed was a spare. Sam tsked.

“Bad luck.”

“Yea.” The man looked down, tugging at the blue shirt covered in paint. He probably caught Sam giving him another look over. “I’m usually cleaner than this,” he said with a laugh. Sam chuckled as well.

“If you’re ever in need of a shower, my place has a nice one.” It was such a lazy line, he didn’t even bother to include the necessary follow up of who he was and where his shower was located, but the exhaustion settling heavy in his bones kept him from caring. He just topped it off with a wink as he knocked his knuckle against his floor number and the elevator doors slid closed.


	3. Chapter 3

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Yes, Steve, I promise I’ve got it. I’ve got this handled like a door.”

Steve snorted a note of laughter. Angelique pointed a finger at him, though she was laughing as well. “Listen, that was the best I could come up with while I’m half paying attention to a dozen kids. Which is why you should hurry to the bank and back before they get their ice cream and the sugar sets in.”

He gave one more glance to their summer youth group as they crowded around the ice cream shop’s counter and enthusiastically discussed ice cream and topping pairings. “Guys, I’ll be right back,” Steve said over the noise. “Be good for Ms. Angelique.”

Elysha stopped her browsing to shout back, “what if they run out of ice cream before you get back?”

“Save me one.”

She looked up at him and nodded, her face fixed in an expression that held at least a hundred times more determination than the situation required. “I have to save Cap a cone!” A dramatic ‘stop’ hand gestured followed. Dustin, standing beside her, did stop.

“I want to help.”

“What kind of flavor?” Cory joined the discussion.

“Does he want a cone with chocolate?” Izzy asked.

“No, a waffle bowl!”

Suddenly and unexpectedly most of the group switched from talking about their own choices to making the best cone (or bowl, still undecided) for Steve. “Okay, I had it handled before you started the great cap cone uproar,” Angelique said. She had a smile and a good-humored tone but Steve still felt bad about getting the group into an accidental tizzy. 

“I’m running,” he promised her in an apologetic whisper.

“Run then!” She mouthed the words before turning her attention back to the kids. “Okay guys, you know how we do this. Hands up if you think if Cap should have vanilla.”

Steve couldn’t exactly manage a run at that time of the afternoon; thankfully though the bank was just a few blocks away and the line inside for the tellers wasn’t all that long. Less than 15 minutes later he was turning around and going back to his half jog half motivated walking.

15 minutes was more than enough for a new event to unfold back at the ice cream shop. Steve got a message from Angelique: a picture of the group sitting at a table, some hands raise, little sample cups covering the tabletop. He slowed to a full on walk. _The Great Cap Ice Cream Debate of Summer 16_ , the message that followed it read. Steve smiled widely to himself. Every single one of those kids were dorks and he loved them terribly.

He started a text to tell Angelique as much. Halfway through confessing that he was going to miss the bunch when the school year started his phone was knocked out of his hand as he was bumped into from his right.

Steve apologized immediately to everyone around him, since he had to screw with the flow of pedestrians to keep his phone from being turned into a hockey puck. “Is your phone okay?”

“Yes!” His phone could take a beating. A drop to the sidewalk caused as much damage as tossing it into a pool full of pillows. “Everything--”

Steve held it up for the stranger’s sake, because they sounded more worried than they needed to be, and he found himself face to face with The—

No, he had to stop calling him that. It was still a very true fact because God he was a beautiful man. He was a level of attractive that made it difficult to look directly at him for too long. Yes, Steve had jumped to comparing him to the sun. He was the man whose brilliance rivaled—

“Truck guy?” Sam’s face lit up in recognition. Steve’s expression mirrored his.

“Shower guy?” Steve couldn’t help but tease. Sam brushed his hand over his mouth, hiding his smile as he tipped his head down.

“That was bad. To be fair though I was really wondering if you needed to borrow someone’s. I think that was, what, the fifth time I’d seen you around dirty.”

Steve tried not to frown as he searched his memory for any other moments where he looked like a mess on legs in front of The—Sam. Some of his concern must have shone through because Sam went on to say, “I notice you around a lot because you’re the only other person I see in our building except for Jarvis. And I don’t know if he ever leaves.”

“I still wonder that about Jarvis. And I’ve never seen another doorman. It’s kind of like he’s--”

“Robot,” Sam concluded. They shared another laugh and Steve was hit with a dose of butterflies-in-stomach. Someone brushing his shoulder as they walked by kept his laughter from getting giddy from his nerves.

“Are you headed my way?”

Sam joined him on his walk back to the ice cream shop, during which he explained all the different Jarvis conspiracies floating around the building between the other residences. From there he also got to confirm that there were other tenants, they just traveled quite a bit for work. If anything they were the odd ones for having stationary jobs.

“The ones that do stick around, we like to get together and run on Saturday mornings.” They reached the ice cream shop a little too quickly for his liking. “If you want to--”

“CAP!”

Elysha’s squeal came first, quickly followed by a chorus of his nickname through the shop’s open doors.

“Mr. Rogers!” Angelique stepped into the doorway. “Glad you’re back. Please get in here and eat this ice cream we so enthusiastically voted on.”

“I’m right there.” She dipped back into the store as Steve apologized, “I’ve got to get in there and save her. We’re in the middle of a trip.”

“No problem, I got somewhere to be myself. Good talking to you.”

“Yea, same. So, Saturday? We usually meet in the lobby around 6.”

“I’m there.”

Technically Steve had no reason to celebrate. He didn’t ask Sam on a date after all, he didn’t even ask him to an outing where they stood half a chance of getting to know each other. And he still hadn’t properly introduced himself.

But dammit, he met the most beautiful man in the world while he was completely clean and that was worth a celebratory (and democratically chosen) waffle bowl of ice cream.


End file.
